Monthly Archives: February 2016

Building the robot is a long process. After kickoff, the team went straight into brainstorming mode to figure out what exactly we want the robot to be able to accomplish. After we determined the main tasks, the experienced members of the team went to Fargo Automation to design the robot using 3D software.

While those members were busy at Fargo Automation, the rest of the builders worked on learning how to do everything they would need to know to be able to build the robot. They then proceeded to build the outer works for the practice field while the parts were being made for the robot.

The programming team worked on learning how to code and also built a prototype of the robot’s shooting mechanism. They tested out the code that they wrote for shooting and vision sensing.

Once the parts began to come in, both builders and programmers worked together to build the robot and test the code that the programmers wrote.

Yes, the robot is the main focus of FRC. But just as important as it is the build the robot, it is also important to build a practice field for your robot to be tested on. It is hard to know whether or not your robot properly works without being able to test it.

According to our build team, the building of the practice field went pretty smoothly. The team mentioned that the measuring of the materials needs to be exact. Cutting the wood to the exact dimensions was difficult for them, especially since it is the first year on the team for many of them. The team spent the first week or so building the field, waiting for the robot to be designed and parts to come in. Their goal was to get as much of the field done so that once the parts for the robot came, they would be able to build.

Our builders built six of the nine outerworks. They did not build the sally port, portcullis, or drawbridge.